Holmesburg

Holmesburg is a neighborhood of northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named for the descendants of 1680s settler John Holme, who founded the Holmesburg Lumber Yard at the turn of the 19th century; at the same time, Holme's descendants sold parcels of their land during the real estate boom. Holmesburg was originally settled by runaway slaves prior to and during the American Civil War, and it had one of the oldest continuous African-American communities in the nation.